Geographic Location, Population Dynamics, and Fruit Damage of an Invasive Citrus Mealybug: The Case of De Lotto in Eastern Spain.

The invasive mealybug De Lotto (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) has rapidly spread in the Mediterranean basin since its detection in 2009 in the Valencia Community in eastern Spain. The use of sticky traps baited with its sex pheromone, (4,5,5-trimethyl-3-methylenecyclopent-1-en-1-yl)methyl acetate, has allowed to determine the geographical distribution of by means of the surveillance network described in the present work. The population monitoring of the pest over a five-year period (2019-2023) has revealed an increase from 31% to 70% of the affected citrus-growing area.

Airborne Pheromone Quantification in Treated Vineyards with Different Mating Disruption Dispensers against .

Mating disruption (MD) is widely used against the European grapevine moth (EGVM), (Denis and Schiffermüller; Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), by installing passive dispensers or aerosol devices. The present work reports a new sampling and quantification methodology to obtain absolute data about field airborne pheromone concentration based on air samplings and sensitive chromatographic-spectroscopic methods. Samplings were performed in fields treated with passive dispensers or aerosol devices at different moments throughout the crop cycle to study how they act and how the disruption is triggered.